Will UK property prices weather a new recession? | Business | The Observer

Will UK property prices weather a new recession? | Business | The Observer

Job losses, banks on the brink and recession knocking at the door. Sound familiar? For anyone who lived through the global financial crisis in 2008, it's been hard not to experience a sense of deja vu in recent weeks. For homeowners and estate agents, the double-dip headlines raise the spectre of more property price falls. For first-time buyers, they offer a glimmer of hope at finally getting onto the first rung of the housing ladder.

A booming decade in which average house prices more than doubled was stopped in its tracks in 2008 as both buyers and banks reeled from crippled credit markets, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Britain's slump into the deepest downturn since the second world war.